VAMFR 030 | Interview with Taliesin Jaffe, Part 1
VAMFR 030 | Interview with Taliesin Jaffe, Part 1
Welcome to episode 30 of the Voice Acting Mastery: Field Report podcast!
You can listen to the podcast using the player above, or download the mp3 using the link at the bottom of this blog post. The podcast is also available via the iTunes Store online. Just follow this link to view the podcast in iTunes:
http://www.vamfieldreport.com/podcast
Recently, our correspondent DanWill McCann had the opportunity to sit down and chat with the very skilled and experienced Voice Actor and Voice Director, Taliesin Jaffe. Taliesin began his acting career on camera when he was very young, starring in commercials, movies, and TV Shows. You may be familiar with his performance as Kenny Butler in the film Mr. Mom. where his character was deeply attached to his security blanket or “wubby” as it was called. As a young adult, Taliesin’s love of Anime drew him to Voice Acting and since then, he has provided over 100 voices for Anime and Video games, as well as adapted scripts, cast voice actors, and directed a multitude of projects. You can hear him as the Flash in the Injustice 2 video game. He also directed the English dub of the anime series Hellsing and Hellsing Ultimate. Currently he is on the popular Geek & Sundry series Critical Role, a show where voice actors play Dungeons and Dragons together and act out the characters in real time. In campaign 1 he played as the character Percy, and now in campaign 2 he is playing as Mollymauk.
In this first segment of our interview, DanWill spoke with Taliesin about his career path. He and DanWill have actually been friends for more than half of DanWill’s life and DW finds his journey both fascinating and inspiring. When DanWill decided to pursue Voice Acting as a career, Taliesin was the first person DW turned to for advice. DanWill has always admired that Taliesin is a consummate professional in addition to being a huge fan of animation and games. Taliesin’s respect for characters and storytelling drives him to always do his best. He not only strives to create fantastic art, but he also tries to raise the bar of artistic achievement, both for himself and those he works with. We hope you will find Taliesin as inspiring as DanWill does!
The VAM Field Report will be released on the 1st Wednesday of every month so stay on the look out for it!
Download VAM Field Report Episode #30 Here (MP3)
VAMFR 029 | Interview with Erica Mendez, Part 3
VAMFR 029 | Interview with Erica Mendez, Part 3
Welcome to episode 29 of the Voice Acting Mastery: Field Report podcast!
You can listen to the podcast using the player above, or download the mp3 using the link at the bottom of this blog post. The podcast is also available via the iTunes Store online. Just follow this link to view the podcast in iTunes:
http://www.vamfieldreport.com/podcast
This episode is the third and final part of Tom Bauer’s interview with his friend and voice over actor, Erica Mendez.
You might recognize Erica from her voice acting work in anime, where she’s played the voice of Gon Freecs in the 2011 anime series adaptation of Hunter X Hunter, Sailor Uranus in the Viz Media English dub of Sailor Moon and Ryuko Matoi in the popular Kill la Kill anime television series. In addition to her many voice acting accomplishments, Erica has also worked as an ADR script writer for the Netflix original anime series, Fate/Apocrypha.
In the previous episode, Tom and Erica talked about some of the challenges Erica faced while pursuing her career as a voice actor, including her struggles with being overly self-critical and how she’s learned to overcome this common stumbling block. She also shared her insights into what it takes to stay competitive in voice over, as well as some of the acting techniques she’s acquired while taking classes and how she implements what she’s learned in the booth.
In this episode, Tom and Erica wrap things up by discussing Pre-lay recording. Voice over for anime is most often recorded one actor at a time, alone in a booth long after the original animation has been completed. However, in American animation, the actors are recorded first and the animators animate the characters to fit those vocal performances. This is called pre-lay since the audio recording is made before the animation is produced. When recording for pre-lay animation, you are often reading with other actors together in the same room. This can be very different from recording all by yourself in an anime dubbing session, so Tom is eager to share Erica’s insights about the process.
The VAM Field Report will be released on the 1st Wednesday of every month so stay on the look out for it!
Download VAM Field Report Episode #29 Here (MP3)
VAMFR 028 | Interview with Erica Mendez, Part 2
VAMFR 028 | Interview with Erica Mendez, Part 2
Welcome to episode 28 of the Voice Acting Mastery: Field Report podcast!
You can listen to the podcast using the player above, or download the mp3 using the link at the bottom of this blog post. The podcast is also available via the iTunes Store online. Just follow this link to view the podcast in iTunes:
http://www.vamfieldreport.com/podcast
This episode is the second part of Tom Bauer’s interview with his good friend and rising talent in the voice over industry, Erica Mendez.
Erica is probably most famous for her voice acting work in anime, taking on such roles as Gon Freecs in the 2011 anime series adaptation of Hunter X Hunter, Sailor Uranus in the Viz Media English dub of Sailor Moon and Ryuko Matoi in the popular Kill la Kill anime television series. If that wasn’t enough, Erica has also started work as an ADR script writer for the Netflix original anime series, Fate/Apocrypha.
When we last left off, Erica was discussing how she made the decision to move from her hometown of Chicago to Los Angeles to pursue her creative endeavors. While she initially intended to move to LA to become a professional animator, her previous experiences performing in online audio dramas opened a new world of opportunity for her in the area of voice acting. When she arrived in LA, a series of fortunate circumstances lined up to give her the chance to audition for voice acting jobs.
In this episode, Erica talks about some of the challenges she faced while pursuing her new voice acting career. She shares her insight into what it takes to stay competitive in voice over, as well as some of the acting techniques she’s adopted while taking classes and how she implements what she’s learned in the booth. We start this episode by delving into her process of developing characters for anime.
The VAM Field Report will be released on the 1st Wednesday of every month so stay on the look out for it!
Download VAM Field Report Episode #28 Here (MP3)
VAM 131 | Interview with Eliza Jane Schneider, Part 1
Welcome to episode 131 of the Voice Acting Mastery podcast with yours truly, Crispin Freeman!
As always, you can listen to the podcast using the player above, or download the mp3 using the link at the bottom of this blog post. The podcast is also available via the iTunes Store online. Just follow this link to view the podcast in iTunes:
http://www.voiceactingmastery.com/podcast
Welcome to first part of my interview with voice actor and dialect expert, Eliza Jane Schneider! You may remember in my previous interview with Zach Hanks how he mentioned how much he appreciated Eliza’s comprehensive dialect classes. Based on Zach’s comments, I thought it would be apropos to have Eliza on the podcast to speak with us! Eliza has an amazingly long and diverse acting career. She started very young as an actress in both school and community theaters. She parlayed her theatrical experience into on-camera acting jobs in college and eventually into voice acting. She’s probably most famous for portraying almost all of the female characters on the animated series South Park in the years between 1999 and 2003. More recently she’s the voice of Agent Rama in the Agents of Mayhem video game, she’s played numerous characters in the animated series Sanjay and Craig, and she’s also in the animated series Breadwinners playing the Tooth Fairy. In addition, Eliza and I have also been in a number of projects together including Diablo III where I played the Male Wizard and she played the Female Necromancer, and also the Pirates of the Caribbean video games where I voice match Orlando Bloom to play Will Turner while she voice matches Keira Knightly to play Elizabeth Swann.
In addition to her many acting accomplishments, Eliza is incredibly dedicated to the study and mastery of English language dialects. While she was still in college, she bought an ambulance and travelled around the country recording people speaking in their native accents. She’s turned many of these interviews into one-woman theater performances where she reenacts her interview subjects on stage. She also studied with Robert Easton, a master of dialects who was once dubbed the Henry Higgins of Hollywood for his ability to train actors. Eliza has taken everything she’s learned from Robert and created her own unique approach to dialects and accents. I’m very happy to have her on the podcast to share her insight and expertise with all my listeners!
In this first episode, we explore how Eliza broke into the entertainment industry. We discuss her desire to be an actress from a very young age and how her experiences in the theater helped shape her approach to acting. It’s amazing how resourceful and ambitious she was in her efforts to tell stories and perform. I think my listeners can learn a lot about tenacity from hearing Eliza’s story!
If you would like to learn more about Eliza’s dialect training, please visit her website at:
Download Voice Acting Mastery Episode #131 Here (MP3)
VAM 130 | Interview with Zach Hanks, Part 3
Welcome to episode 130 of the Voice Acting Mastery podcast with yours truly, Crispin Freeman!
As always, you can listen to the podcast using the player above, or download the mp3 using the link at the bottom of this blog post. The podcast is also available via the iTunes Store online. Just follow this link to view the podcast in iTunes:
http://www.voiceactingmastery.com/podcast
Welcome to the third and final part of my interview with voice actor, director and teacher, Zach Hanks! You may be familiar with his performances as Garnac in the animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Morgan and Custis Pendleton in the video game Dishonored and Lars Halford in the game Brutal Legend.
Not only is Zach a voice actor, but he’s also worked as both a voice director and casting director on multiple video game projects. In addition, Zach has taught voice acting as a professor at the Stephen F. Austin State University in Eastern Texas. He currently resides in Atlanta where he is continuing to pursue his own voice over career in addition to founding the Voice Over Career Launch Pad, a service that helps voice over artists learn the skills they need to become business-savvy professionals in the industry.
In the previous episode, we explored major turning points in Zach’s varied career and the very practical lessons he learned from each of them. As we conclude our time together, Zach and I discuss his experience as a college professor and the most common mistakes that students tended to make in his acting classes. The time Zach spent working with those students helped him shape his current education program, the Voice Over Career Launch Pad. Zach observed that around the country there were many fine voice performance classes taught by very reputable teachers. Where he saw a lack of education was for voice actors who wanted to develop the technical and business skills that they needed to be competent and reliable in the voice over marketplace. Zach’s experiences as an actor, director, and professor give him a unique understanding of what it takes to help people get their voice over careers up and running as quickly as possible. But I’ll let Zach tell you more about all of those topics himself.
Zach’s Facebook Group: Voice Over Career Launch Pad
Zach’s Auto-Scheduler: Schedule an Online Meeting with Zach Hanks
Download Voice Acting Mastery Episode #130 Here (MP3)
VAM 129 | Interview with Zach Hanks, Part 2
Welcome to episode 129 of the Voice Acting Mastery podcast with yours truly, Crispin Freeman!
As always, you can listen to the podcast using the player above, or download the mp3 using the link at the bottom of this blog post. The podcast is also available via the iTunes Store online. Just follow this link to view the podcast in iTunes:
http://www.voiceactingmastery.com/podcast
Welcome to the second part of my interview with voice actor, director and teacher, Zach Hanks! You may be familiar with his performances as Garnac in the animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Morgan and Custis Pendleton in the video game Dishonored and Lars Halford in the game Brutal Legend.
Not only is Zach a voice actor, but he’s also worked as both a voice director and casting director on multiple video game projects. In addition, Zach has taught voice acting as a professor at the Stephen F. Austin State University in Eastern Texas. He currently resides in Atlanta where he is continuing to pursue his own voice over career in addition to founding the Voice Over Career Launch Pad, a service that helps voice over artists learn the skills they need to become business-savvy professionals in the industry.
Last time, during the first part of our interview, we discussed Zach’s journey through voice acting from his earliest days starting as an actor, through becoming a casting director, a voice director, a college professor, and finally moving to Atlanta to continue his career. It was an amazing journey with plenty of twists and turns! Every challenge that Zach faced taught him so much about himself and about the industry. If you haven’t already, I highly recommend you listen to the previous episode before continuing with this one.
In this second part of our interview, we delve deeper into the different turning points of Zach’s career. I ask Zach to elaborate on the lessons he learned from each of these influential experiences and how he applied them to creating his own unique voice acting journey. He’s got some wonderful out of the box thinking that I’m eager to share with you, as well as some tough love about what it takes to be truly successful! So let’s dive in!
Download Voice Acting Mastery Episode #129 Here (MP3)